


forget the dragon, leave the gun on the table. this has nothing to do with happiness.

by Suchagayhumanbeing



Series: you want a better story. who wouldn’t? [2]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e15 Revelations, Episode: s04e07 Memoriam, Episode: s06e12 Corazón, Episode: s11e18 A Beautiful Disaster, Graphic descriptions of drug use, Mental Illness, Post-Episode: s02e15 Revelations, Schizophrenia, again: not a fix it fic, bullying tw, completed work, drug use tw, graphic mentions of suicide/suicidal thoughts, if you like being sad abt spencer reid, injuries tw, intense migraines, not canon, past spencer reid, season 12 and 13, suicide TW, tags will edited as fic updates, this fic is for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27415996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suchagayhumanbeing/pseuds/Suchagayhumanbeing
Summary: spencer is used to saving himself. he’s 36 years old and if he’s learned one thing it’s this: he’s the only one who can.but:it is 2017 and spencer reid has saved himself too many times for even a genius to count and he’s exhausted. he’s done.or5 times spencer reid saved himself, and the one time he didn’t bother
Relationships: David Rossi & Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan & Spencer Reid, Diana Reid & Spencer Reid, Jason Gideon & Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid & The BAU Team
Series: you want a better story. who wouldn’t? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983397
Comments: 22
Kudos: 160





	1. will you love me even more when i’m dead?

**Author's Note:**

> “you want a better story. who wouldn’t?” -richard siken.

Spencer Reid is 12 years old and he’s being beaten. 

By a friend, by enemies, by people he barely knows. It doesn’t matter. 

Their punches hurt all the same. 

Spencer Reid is 12 years old and he’s in his last year of high school and he’s met with 4 counselors who ask questions they don’t really want the answer to and Spencer tells them lies and they both pretend he’s telling the truth and the counselors pretend not to see his bruises. 

They both pretend not to see them. 

Spencer Reid is 12 years old and his father left him 8 years ago because his son and his wife weren’t normal and he wasn’t strong enough and he never stopped to wonder if his son was stronger than he was. 

He never stopped to wonder if Spencer would collapse under the weight of being Atlas. 

Spencer Reid is 12 years old and his mother has schizophrenia and he can’t heal her because he’s not smart enough and he’s learning faster than teachers can comprehend because he wants to, needs to heal her and he can’t do it fast enough. She’s deteriorating and it’s his fault. 

Spencer Reid is 12 years old and he knows it gets better after this but it doesn’t matter. 

Spencer Reid is 12 years old and he has enough pills in his hand to kill him. 

* * *

Spencer Reid has pills in his palm and he’s lifting them to his mouth because he’s a monster.

He's a sinner.

(He knows he’s a sinner before someone tells him he is in the body of a broken boy.)

Spencer Reid is looking in the mirror and he doesn’t even see himself anymore, he doesn’t see the sobbing boy lifting death to his mouth, he doesn’t see the vulnerable genius who wishes he could be more, who wishes he could be smart enough to be enough. He sees nothing. Nothing at all. 

Spencer Reid is 12 years old and he’s only weeks away from graduating and he knows life will be better when he leaves but he can’t live with this anymore, the overwhelming guilt, the unconscious pleads for forgiveness in the middle of the night, the tears that force themselves down his cheeks at every opportunity. 

He can’t anymore.

He just can’t.

And he knows this makes him selfish, he knows this makes him a monster, but he can hardly find it in him to care. 

He’s all burnt out. 

He’s burnt out of caring, of tears, of being alive because he’s burnt out of being himself. A selfish sinner. 

He's counting the pills in his hand unconsciously again and he knows this will be the most painless way to die because he’s made a list and studied the list and used his knowledge of anatomy.

Even in death, he will be the most selfish boy there is.

Spencer lifts the handful of pills to his mouth and his hand is shaking violently with selfishness and guilt and he feels as if he is breaking in half. 

Maybe he always has been. 

He is a broken, broken boy. 

Pills shake along with his hand and one by one, they start to spill and clack onto the floor like a symphony of death and he’s bursting into tears at this and this causes the all pills to spill from his hand and he is surrounded by an orchestra of his own destruction and he’s dropping to his knees in front of death and begging for something he doesn’t even know.

Death? Life? Happiness?

The ability to save himself? 

He can't even hear the words spilling from his mouth but he can feel them and maybe he’d be worried about his mother hearing if she was okay and healthy and a wave of guilt comes to Spencer and racks his body and all he’s thinking about is how much he doesn’t want to feel this. 

How much he wants it to stop.

(Maybe if he believed in anything, he’d believe that the next life would be better.)

He’s gathering the pills in his hand.

He’s pleading to someone, perhaps a god he doesn’t believe in, to save him.

Because he cannot save himself.

Perhaps he never could. 

There is no answer. There is never an answer. There is no solution, no redemption but this:

White and red capsules in his pale palms.

* * *

Spencer wonders about something with the pills in his hand. 

(His wrist starts to ache. It screams at him. Take the pills or don’t, just let me rest)

(He takes the pain because he deserves it.)

He wonders about his father.

William Reid.

He wonders if he changed his name so someone couldn’t recognize him. So someone couldn’t hear it and ask “hey, aren’t you father to that smart ass?”

He wonders if his father changed his name to forget what he left behind. 

He wonders where William is now. Somewhere far away, probably. Maybe re-married. Maybe another child.

A normal one.

One who can ask him for help in math and one he can help in school without feeling as if he failed. 

He wonders if he looks any different.

He wonders if he remembers his family he left behind. He wonders if his father thinks of them anymore; if he ever did. 

He wonders if William Reid regretted leaving. If he regretted getting in his car and leaving a child prodigy with a mentally ill mother.

Not just any child prodigy, though.

 _His_. 

His child prodigy

He wonders if his father ever pondered coming back. If he ever drove by their house again and wanted to come inside. 

(Who was he kidding? His father got on the highway and never came back because that’s what kind of person William Reid was. That’s the kind of person Spencer pushed him to be.)

Of course this was all his fault.

(He wonders when he will stop feeling guilty)

* * *

Here’s all he can say to his mother: 

_Sorry._

_Sorry for the pills in my hand, sorry that I can’t save you, sorry I’m okay and you’re not; sorry I can’t heal you._

_Sorry I'm here, sorry I ruined everything, sorry I got tied to a goalpost and wasn’t home in time to make you dinner. Sorry you have to worry about me._

_Sorry I have to leave._

_Sorry I can’t forgive myself, sorry I can’t accept your forgiveness, sorry, sorry, sorry._

His pleads for forgiveness usually come next, it’s routine, it’s memorized, it’s all he knows. But:

forgiveness is for boys who don’t have death in their hands. 

Forgiveness is for everyone but Spencer Reid.

* * *

He's lifting the pills to his mouth again and death is looking at him through the mirror and he’s thinking about what will be waiting for him in the afterlife. 

Maybe he’ll finally be at peace. 

He’s apologizing with one last breath before his hand is-

He drops the pills. Again. 

They clatter on the tile in a symphony of defeat. An orchestra of vulnerability. 

A whisper slips from his mouth. 

“wait.”

This wasn’t his word.

He doesn’t know why he would even say it because he’s been waiting to die, to be smarter, to be enough for years and it’s never come, he will never be enough, he’s done waiting. 

He’s done.

He bends down to collect the pills for a second time and as he’s picking them up, his brain whispers to him again.

“Wait.”

Spencer stops. 

Wait?

Why would he wait?

He’s 12 years old and his father left 8 years ago and his mother has gotten worse and he is beaten every day and he’s been waiting for months, years. he’s done, absolutely done-

“what if your mother needs them?”

Spencer freezes as the thought comes into his head. 

“mom?”

Diana Reid hadn’t taken her prescribed medication in months, hence the filled bottle of pills with the top collecting dust. She wouldn’t start taking them now.

He starts picking up the pills again and blowing dirt off them, collecting them in his hand again. He can barely do this. He just wants it to be over.

Regardless, he can’t get this out of his mind. 

“what if she needs them? what if she starts taking them?”

He knows this is irrational. He knows it will never happen because his mother is schizophrenic and she believes the pills make her worse and she can’t think without them and she refuses to listen to the doctors. 

Spencer has taken 2 psychology courses and knows he has an irrational mind, everyone does, and this is a last resort because a part of him doesn’t want to die and he should shut it out, he should recognize the irrationality of it. 

She’ll never need them.

“just one more day.” his mind supplies. “just one.”

He pauses. 

“wait one more day. then, if she still hasn’t taken them, you can.”

Spencer’s selfishness is weak when it comes to his mother. His rationality, too.

Just one day. 

He finishes picking up the pills, and holds them in his hand once more.

Just one more day. 

The red and white pills clack back into a tall, orange bottle. 

One more day. 

He leaves the bathroom and goes to check on his mother.

* * *

The next day, Spencer Reid walks home 1 minute faster than normal.

His mother is asleep with the windows drawn when he checks on her per usual, and he rushes to the bathroom, flinging his backpack filled with textbooks and books on the bed. 

He opens the medicine cabinet and sighs with relief when he sees the bottle of pills has remained full. 

He counts them, just to be sure. 

Not one has been taken. 

He feels a rush of relief as he realizes no one has touched the bottle, but immediately digs his fingernails into his palm. 

Relief? 

_Relief?_

Relief at what?

That his mother didn’t take a step to try and get better? 

Relief that he gets to leave her?

Relief that he gets to be a selfish monster for another day? 

(For a last day?)

Relief?

He digs his fingernails into his palm until it bleeds.

He doesn't deserve peace.

He doesn’t deserve to die.

He puts the pills back and goes to his room. 

One more day.

* * *

The next day: 

Spencer Reid tries to rush home but is delayed by bruises on top of bruises and aches. 

He arrives 5 minutes later than usual. 

His mom is standing in the kitchen when he gets home, hand wrapped around the handle of a pot. 

“Hi, mom.” Spencer says, putting his backpack down and limping to her. “what are you-“

He peeks his head to see what she’s making, but nothing is in the pot. Steam is billowing from the bottom of the heated surface, and Diana’s pushing the pot back and forth as if she were making lunch.

“Oh,” she whispers, looking up at Spencer slowly, seeing him for the first time since he walked in. “Hi, honey. I’m making soup. Do you want some?”

His heart deflates. “no,” he shakes his head. “I’m okay. Thank you.”

“Okay,” Diana replies, turning back to the pot. 

“Hey, mom? Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll finish making the soup. You need your rest. Does that sound good?” Spencer asks while gently prying the handle away from his mother's hand. 

Diana blinks at him, turning the words over in her mind. “okay, baby.” She drops her hands and lets her son guide her to a seat. 

Spencer reaches into a cabinet and grabs a can of soup, opening it and pouring it into the steaming pot. 

“How was your day, honey?” Diana asks

“It was good, mom.” Spencer hates how easily lies slip from him. 

“Good.” She sighs. 

“Have you, uh-“ Spencer starts, but hesitates. Should he remind her-

 _yes_.

“Have you taken your meds today?” 

“No.” her voice teeters on the edge of sharpness. She says nothing else. 

“okay.” he answers, but his mind is spinning. He wants to feel relief, but the scabs from yesterday are barely healing. He doesn’t need his mother to wonder why he’s bleeding again. Frustration comes to mind. 

The soup boils to show it’s ready, and he turns the heat off. 

He thinks about something, and he’s offering his mother an excuse and is slipping away to the bathroom. 

The bottle is in his hand before he knows it.

_(not today.)_

He takes one capsule, and slips it into his pocket. 

He flushes the empty toilet to fulfill the excuse he’d told his mom and came back to the soup. 

“Mom?” he asks as he pours the soup into a bowl. “Could you go pick out a book for us to read?”

“Of course, Spencer.” she whispers after a couple seconds. He hears her chair creak as she gets up and her dragging feet as she walks to her bedroom. 

He slips the pill from his pocket and opens the capsule above her soup, watching white powder dissolve in steaming chicken soup. 

He hears Diana coming back and shoves the two empty halves of a capsule into his pocket. A book clatters on the table and his mom sits with an empty look in her eyes. 

He hands her the soup and picks up the book.

“ _Swann in love by Marcel Proust_.” It's a book way past his reading level, a book for four year old him, but he opens it anyway, watching as his mom eats the medicine-laced soup. 

_“and so, night after night, she would be taken home in Swann’s carriage; and one night, after she had got down and while he stood at the gate and muttered ‘till to-morrow then!’ she turned impulsively from him...”_

One more day.

* * *

And, so on. 

Spencer Reid pours the pills into his hand every day after school and he looks death in the eye and puts them back. 

It never gets any easier. 


	2. dangerous thing: an open arm, an open channel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2007; aftermath or revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: graphic drug use and mentions of suicide + murder
> 
> “how much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?” -richard siken

“Kid. You okay?”

Spencer Reid is not okay. He will never be okay again.

“Yeah.”

“You sure about that, Reid?”

No. he needs help. He needs someone to notice the tiny bottles in his pocket. He needs someone to force him to give them up. He needs things he cannot ask for. 

“Yes. I'm okay, Morgan.”

“Okay.”

Morgan sits across from him anyway. 

“Why don’t you get some sleep, kid?”

Reid won’t sleep. He can’t. because everytime he closes his eyes, he sees Tobias. Charles. Raphael. 

_“Do you think I’ll see my mother again?”_

A too late answer.

“You’re a sinner, boy!”

He knows, he knows, he knows. 

He cannot fall asleep because he’s afraid. He's afraid of someone finding the track marks in the crook of his elbow. He's afraid of someone reaching into his pocket. 

He wants it, yet he’s afraid of it. 

He needs it to happen but it is still his greatest fear. 

He’s afraid he’ll talk in his sleep. 

The team, his family, they don’t know how bad it was. They saw what Charles wanted them to see. What Raphael wanted them to see. They weren’t sadists, they didn’t want to torture the team because they couldn’t save him. He knew a sadist when he saw one. They truly believed they were doing good. 

He’s afraid of becoming like them. 

Delusions can trick someone into believing they aren’t delusions at all, but truth. Justice. 

What if he’s already like them? 

He cannot sleep because Morgan is sitting opposite him and he can hear everything Reid does and says and he tries not to shift as to not clink together the small bottles in his pocket. 

He can’t sleep because he’s filled with fear. Fear he’s becoming Charles and Raphael, fear someone will find him out, fear he will say something in his sleep and someone will figure out everything he went through. 

Reid can feel Gideon's eyes on him. 

He avoids looking up.

If he makes eye contact, Reid will tell him everything. He’ll give Gideon the dilaudid. He'll show Gideon the track marks. Reid will tell him everything. 

A sharp pain stabs his head and he digs the palm of his hand into his eyes; a painful reminder of how much time had passed between doses. 

He notices Morgan giving him a side eye, and mumbles a quick “I'm fine” before curling in on himself and looking out the window. 

He pretends to sleep.

* * *

Hotch insists on driving him home. Spencer knows it's no use arguing, and he doubts he would have the energy. The pounding in his head has only gotten worse, and it’s taken everything to not hunch over and dig both heels of his hand into his eyes. 

He just wants to get home as fast as possible. 

The drive home drips with silence. Spencer thinks about how they’ve invented a new kind of silence. a “I’m sorry you got kidnapped and I couldn’t find you faster and I know you’re hiding something but I don’t want to push you away and I don’t know how to help you and I need you to tell me how” from Hotch, and Spencer’s “You did everything you could and I’m sorry I have drugs in my pocket and I’m sorry I can’t ask you for help. It’s better if you don’t know.” 

This new silence is deafening. 

He pulls into the front of Spencer’s apartment complex. Reid goes to open the door, but Hotch puts a hand on his shoulder. 

“You’re taking 2 weeks off.”

Spencer shakes his head immediately, opening his mouth to protest, but Hotch shakes his head. 

“You’ve just been through something traumatic, Reid. “You need time.”

“I don’t need time, Hotch!” Reid bursts out, saying something for the first time since they left the graveyard. 

His boss lets a surprised look on his face for a moment before going to insist on his demand. 

Reid interrupts before he can. “Please, Hotch. I- I need this. Work. Please.”

“Okay.” Hotch sighs after a moment of turning it over. “Fine. But if I see any sign that it’s too soon for you to be in the field, I’m pulling you out.”

Reid breathes with relief. “Thank you,” he stops himself from calling him father. “Thank you, Hotch.”

He opens the door, and disappears from his boss’s line of vision as he turns the corner.

* * *

Spencer is ashamed at how fast his fingers find the dilaudid in his deep pocket. He's ashamed of how fast he finds a needle in his at home medical kit, he’s ashamed of the fact that it takes exactly 53 seconds to prepare a drug-filled syringe. 

But he does it all the same.

Shame doesn’t stop the needle. Shame doesn’t take away the pain. Shame doesn’t throw the dilaudid out. 

He goes to tie his arm with a tight blue ribbon, but stops. 

He takes his belt off, and uses that instead. 

_“no, no, please, i don’t want it-“_

_“tell me it won’t help.”_

_“please-“_

He slaps his arm a few times.

_“I’m not weak.”_

In goes the needle. 

“ _you’re a sinner!”_

Before he presses on the plunger, he looks to the door. 

The door he left unlocked in hopes someone would come. 

He needs someone to force this needle out of his hand. 

_(selfish, selfish, stop it)_

There is nothing.

_(it’s not their fault, it’s yours, you’re the junkie, y-)_

Dilaudid floods his system.

* * *

Spencer is called to do a case the next day and everyone is looking at him as if he were a zoo animal and the crook of his arm itches. 

He’s irritable, of course he’s irritable, because no one thinks he can do his job anymore. 

He goes home and paces for exactly 10 minutes and 20 seconds before collapsing on the couch. 

Did they think he couldn’t do his job anymore? Did they think just because some religious junkie kidnapped him and tortured him and made him dig his own grave- did they assume that would deplete his knowledge? His skill?

It only made him more of an asset. 

What they didn’t understand was that he was more useful to them because he knew what it was like to be in those crime scene photos. To be-

To be-

Spencer runs to the bathroom and vomits. 

Victim#3...

Rotten leaves, the smell, the touch, they’re choking him

Another retch echoes. 

Victim #5 was found in a pile of...

Leaves, leaves, leaves

 _Sinner_! 

He vomits again. 

“Kid, you okay?”

“Reid, talk to me.”

“Spence…”

A sadist is one characterized by sadism; a person who takes pleasure in inflicting pain, punishment, or humiliation on others

Wounds were inflicted all over her body...

She suffered.

_What you deserved..._

Shut up!

Overlapping voices and overlapping profiles and victims and definitions and knowledge and pictures and rotten leaves and, and-

The needle finds the vein before he can even realize what he’s doing.

* * *

Spencer realizes something one day, with a syringe dangling from his useless fingers and a belt wrapped loosely around his upper arm. 

This was going to kill him. 

How selfish.

* * *

Spencer Reid goes in to work the next day and they have a case and he’s begging for help. 

An arsonist. 

A junkie. 

How different are they really, in the scheme of things? 

“It’s like an addiction, actually. He wouldn’t be able to stop on his own.”

Who was he talking about, the arsonist or himself?

Gideon knew. 

* * *

Spencer really thought Gideon would come by after the case.

He didn’t. 

No one did. 

* * *

There really is no one coming. 

Spencer collapses. 

There’s no one coming because he wasn’t enough, because he could never be enough, because they knew what he was doing and they didn’t care enough to knock on his door and save him and he found himself apologizing. 

He knows this is going to kill him and suddenly he doesn’t care anymore. 

He's sorry. He really is. 

He’s sorry for everything he’s done, he’s sorry they had to save him, he's so sorry. 

The needle finds his vein again. 

There is no knock at the door.

There is no rattle of the doorknob. 

There is nothing but the sound of Spencer Reid collapsing on the floor as he secretly hopes he’s taken enough of this for forsaken drug to die. 

He wakes up.

He wakes up because he didn’t take enough to die and he knew this. 

He gets a text. 

“New case.” -Hotch

He goes into the office because there’s nothing else to do. He could sit and wait to die, or help save someone else. 

He can’t save himself so he’s decided on this:

Helping people and killing himself every night with a needle and mumbled apologies.

* * *

Here’s how it goes: 

Spencer Reid is going to die from this and there is no one to save him. but he doesn’t want to die anymore. He needs to save lives. He needs to help people. So Spencer does what he does best. 

He pretends. 

He pretends there’s a knock at the door. He pretends Gideon opens the door and sees him with his syringe and gives him that look only a father could. A look of pure disappointment and forgiveness.

He pretends someone is there. 

He pretends Gideon's hand gently takes Spencer’s and puts down the syringe and gathers Reid in his arms. He pretends he cries in his father’s arms.

He pretends Jason Gideon has come to care for his son in his time of need. 

He pretends his father helps him through the seizures, the chills, the fever that comes with withdrawal. He pretends Gideon is there, actually there. 

* * *

Spencer is 2 weeks clean when the real Jason Gideon leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!! sorry it took me forever to update, I'll try to update on a weekly basis. i hope you enjoyed :)) feel free to leave feedback, let me know what you thought! love you guys <33


	3. someone has to leave first. this is a very old story. there is no other version of this story.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fourteen minutes. William Reid was fourteen minutes away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You remember too much, my mother said to me recently. Why hold onto all that? and I said, where can I put it all down?"

It’s raining when Spencer walks out of the hotel.

He hardly notices.

All he can think about is: 

_“You should really join a sport, Spencer, are you sure you want to be in here reading all day?”_

_“Hit the ball, Spencer!”_

_“We’re not just statistics, Spencer.”_

_“You don’t understand, Spencer.”_

_“I’m sorry, Spencer”_

William Reid was fourteen minutes away. 

Fourteen minutes. 

He was fourteen minutes away when the landlord threatened eviction the first time, the second time, the third time, the countless times after that. 

He was fourteen minutes away when classmates bullied him for being the son of a coward, the son of a father who abandoned him. 

He was fourteen minutes away when his mother hit him and he was fourteen minutes away each time Spencer made excuses for the bruises. 

He was fourteen minutes when Spencer almost attempted suicide. When he was beaten by bullies. When he gave his mother the last can of soup because it was all they could afford that week. When he cried in his room because he needed a father. When he needed someone else because he couldn’t do it alone. 

Reid bumps into somebody and they yell at him to _“Watch it!”_ And he mumbles his apologies but he can’t stop thinking about: 

The countless nights Diana Reid cried thinking her son couldn’t hear because her husband had abandoned them. 

The countless nights Spencer Reid broke down because he wasn’t strong enough. 

The countless nights Spencer and Diana pretended not to hear each other cry and scream and break down. 

Fourteen. Minutes. 

* * *

Reid goes to see him. 

He walks into his father’s office and disregards William’s surprised “Spencer!” 

“Fourteen minutes.” His forces out, voice trembling with anger and sadness and what could’ve been. “Fourteen minutes.”

“What?” William looks at him, confused, as if he were innocent, as if he weren’t the one who left his family all those years ago. 

“You were fourteen minutes away from us. Fourteen. Why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you visit?”

“I-”

“You had a _son_!” He bursts out, interrupting William. “You...you had a son.”

“Oh, Spencer,” His father breathes, moving closer to Reid but the latter steps back. 

“No.” he says. “You don’t get to touch me. Not after what you did.”

“Reid, you don’t understand, I…”

“What? What, _father_?” He spits the name out like poison. William flinches. “What don’t I understand?”

“I wasn’t strong enough, son. I wasn’t strong enough to take care of you and your mother.”

“Oh, but your 4 year old son was?” He replies, sneering.

“Of course you were. Look at where you are now! You’re strong, Spencer. You always were.” The kindness slathered in his voice doesn’t make up for the excuses tumbling from his father’s useless lips. 

“Yes, but I shouldn’t have had to be. I shouldn’t have had to worry about where my next meal was coming from, I shouldn’t have had to worry about whether we’d have enough money to keep the roof over our heads. Do you know how many times we almost got evicted? I’m stronger than you dad, but only because you forced me to be.”

Reid almost flinches as William chokes out a sob. “I’m sorry, son, I really am. I’m so sorry.”

Apologies aren’t enough. 

No amount of sorries in the entire world could fix this: a son without his father.

William knew this. And he still let useless sorries bombard his son.

He is the most selfish person Spencer Reid knew. 

“You don’t get to call me son.” 

Reid said nothing to the apology. He turns to leave. 

“I never meant to disappear from your life.”

Spencer laughs humorlessly. He doesn’t even turn around to look his father- no. William Reid in the eye. “Yes, you did. And you’re not my father. Not anymore.”

He walks out of William Reid’s office and life in the hopes he will never see him again. 

* * *

It’s still raining as Spencer leaves. He still doesn’t notice. 

Footsteps rush behind him, and he feels anger boil his blood because he know it’s William and there is no more he can say, no more he-

“Dr. Reid?”

Oh. 

His assistant peers at Reid nervously, almost afraid she’d got the wrong person. 

“Y-“ His voice comes out hoarse, and he clears his throat. “Yes?”

“I’m Mr. Reid’s assistant.” She introduces herself, and Spencer nods. 

“I know.”

“I couldn’t help but overhear what your conversation with him as you were leaving, Dr. Reid, and I wanted to…”

“I don’t believe that’s any of your business,” Spencer interrupts, and cringes at his rudeness at a stranger but he doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. He doesn’t want to be here, in front of his father’s office that is fourteen minutes from where he abandoned his family. 

“Right,” She says, and goes to turn away, but hesitates. “I just…I’ve worked with William for more than 10 years.”

Spencer’s heart pangs. Why did she get more time? Why did a total stranger know his father more than he did? 

“And I wanted to tell you that he asked me to keep tabs on you for all of that time. He truly thought about you every day. He never, truly abandoned you.”

Spencer laughs humorlessly. “So he didn’t even google me. You did.”

“Well, yes, but-“

“I’m sorry you feel the need to defend my father, I truly am. But you’re wrong. He did abandon me. He left me and my mother to fend for ourselves while he ran off to a law firm fourteen minutes away from where we lived. He never even bothered to visit.”

His phone vibrates in his back pocket. 

“I’m sorry, Dr. Reid, that you feel that way. I just wanted you to know that no matter what, he’ll always be your father. You’ll have to forgive him at some point.”

“You’re still wrong.”

“Sorry?”

“He’s not my father. Not anymore. And I don’t have to forgive him. He had 8 years to make it right before it was too late.”

Spencer turns to go, but William’s assistant stops him again. 

“If I may,” she says, “but if he’s not your father, who is?”

Spencer looks down at his phone screen and lets a smile onto his face. 

“The one who’s actually there.”

_“You okay, kid? Dinner at mine tonight.”_

_-Rossi_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! sorry it took so long for me to get this chapter out, I've been in a bit of a writer's block. let me know what you think of this chapter/fic! I'm a bit insecure about this chapter, I've been struggling to write more dialogue. leave a kudos and/or comment if you enjoyed! feedback is welcome as always. hope y'all are doing okay <33


	4. you're on earth, there's no cure for that.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> spencer is wearing sunglasses and pretending everything is okay. someone is telling him that there are ghosts in his head but he's pretending everything's ok. 
> 
> (season 6, episode 12: Corázon)

“I know about mental illness, maybe even better than you, so…” 

Spencer doesn't remember what comes out of his mouth as he storms out of the office and he doesn’t mean to stomp out, he doesn't mean to yell at the doctor, he doesn’t mean it, he doesn’t, he promises but the raging knife stabs his head again and again and no one can heal him, no one can heal him, and this doctor is the same, the same as everyone who doesn’t believe him. They think it’s all in his head. They think he’s doing it to himself. 

The fluorescent lights stab him behind his eye again and again and he presses the palm of his hand to his eyes, and he’s begging someone, anyone to make it stop but nothing heals him, nothing comes and Spencer puts on his sunglasses in a weak attempt to stop the cruel lights from sneaking a scalding stab into his brain.

He leaves with the doctor’s office with even less hope he’d had before.

* * *

Spencer’s head is buried in a pillow, an ice pack on his head and 2 pairs of sunglasses tangled in his hair when his phone rings. The sound vibrates in his head like an agonizing gunshot, and he groans, a half-sob climbing into his throat as he grabs for his phone. He desperately hits at it, his eyes squeezed shut, the screen blinding him behind his shut eyes.

“Reid?” Hotch’s monotone voice echoed through Reid’s phone, and he raised his eyebrows in shock that he had managed to answer the phone. 

Spencer cleared his throat, trying to clear all evidence of his sobs and painful screams into his pillow. 

“Hey, Hotch.” He answered, scrambling to put on his sunglasses at the rays of light that peeked through his blackout curtains that hung on his apartment windows. “New case?”

“Yeah. Unusual murder, an intricate ritual. Miami PD has asked us to consult. Can you be here in 30?” Hotch explained, the sound of case files being flipped through in the background. 

“Y-” His voice cracked, a tiny sob escaping in his pause. He tries to cover it with the sound of clearing his throat. “See you in 30.”

“Reid, are you-” Hotch began to say, but Spencer hung up the phone before he could finish that wretched question. 

A new case. Miami. Murder. 

Spencer tries not to vomit as he puts his sunglasses on and grabs his satchel. 

(He slips 2 extra pairs of sunglasses into his bag. For when no one’s looking.)

Reid goes into his bathroom, tidying up his look to resemble someone who hadn’t been groaning in pain for the past week, for someone who had nothing to hide.

He studies his face in the mirror. 

“I’m fine.” He says to the mirror. Unconvincing. Try again. 

“Really, I’m fine.” His reflection scowls. Pathetic. They’re profilers. You can do better. 

“I’m okay. I’m fine.”

He switches off the light and leaves before his reflection can tell him his mask is slipping. 

* * *

Reid barely notices anything but the buzzing fluorescent lights and the stabbing sensation in his head, and it’s everything he can do not sink to his knees and dig the heel of his hand into his eye. 

“Kid. You okay?” Morgan’s concern pierces through the thick fog of pain. 

“Y-” Reid starts to say, straightening in his chair. _Your mask is slipping._ “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Morgan side-eyes him, not quite believing it, but saying nothing. Reid turns away from him and to Garcia presenting today’s murder victim.

He pretends to be paying attention, but his mind is going through every diagnosis he’s ever researched in a textbook or in an unsub and his heartbeat speeds up as he ponders the possibility of a schizophrenic break. 

Could he be going crazy? 

No. 

_Right_? 

“Wheels up in 30.” Hotch’s voice filters through his thoughts, and Reid gets up too fast and attracts a couple pairs of eyes and he ignores them because he has to get away. 

Reid hurries to the bathroom and turns the lights off and puts his sunglasses on and relaxes. The pain in his head calms to a slow throbbing. 

He spends 20 minutes in the bathroom before leaving to a day of unfiltered sunlight and dry heat. 

Perhaps this was his very own hell. 

* * *

Spencer doesn’t really believe in god. He believes in an afterlife, sure. He believes in death and perhaps a higher being, sure. But he doesn’t believe in the christian god. The savior. The one who heals those who ache and the one who blesses those who believe. The one who does all and sees all and sent his son down to absorb humanity's sins. 

He says he doesn't believe in god. This is what he means:

He doesn’t believe in a kind god. 

His head throbs in the pressure of the jet. 

(“What’s the weather in Miami?”

“My guess? Hot and sunny.”)

* * *

Morgan is noticing. Reid’s mask is slipping. He tells Morgan a fact about the name of the town and to his relief, he backs off. 

You can’t let them know, they can’t know, 

(you want them to know-)

He wants, needs help. He can’t reach out. He can do nothing but try and ask for help behind the constant readjustment of his mask. He is the one building the walls. He is one holding the sledgehammer, tearing down those walls. He is his own jailer. He is his own enemy.

* * *

A fence lock bangs against a pole, it bangs and bangs and bangs and it’s all he can hear and the roasted goat head he just passed flickers in his mind and it mixes with every murder victim, every crime scene he’s ever scene and a silver platter blinds him and his head hurts so bad and someone is asking if he’s okay and he can’t even bother to answer and he can’t take off his sunglasses. 

(He takes off his vest and digs his hands into his eyes and solves the case.) 

Someone is pointing a gun at him and he’s reminded of: 

“You’re a sinner, boy!”

But the broken boy is not here, there’s an unsub and Spencer’s racking his brain for things to say to him and a dim light is torturing him and he’s starting to breakdown and beg for it to be turned off and in the midst of the unsub’s confusion he seizes an opportunity he hadn’t expected and the team kicks down the door but Spencer has already saved himself. 

* * *

(“I pretended to have a headache.”

“Pretended?”

“Yeah, pretended.”)

* * *

Spencer is in a taxi because he doesn’t trust himself to drive home and he has 2 pairs of sunglasses on and hunched over as to hide from the sun and he’s thinking about death. About life. About god and heaven and hell and what that man said to him. 

“There are ghosts in your head.” Ghosts of those he barely knew, ghosts he wished for a life with, ghosts, ghosts, he had nothing but a haunted brain that was torturing him. 

(“Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“No, no idea.”)

* * *

Spencer is sitting on his apartment floor with blackout curtains drawn and letting his fingers drift from pillow to pillow, all scattered around him. 

He wonders if he will go to hell. 

He wonders if he’s already condemned. 

He wonders if he even believes. After everything that happened. 

Spencer Reid goes into the bathroom and doesn’t turn the lights on and practices saying “I’m fine” in the mirror. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! corázon honestly broke my heart, I've watched at least 3 times ngl. leave a kudos and/or a comment if you like! feedback, as always, is appreciated.


	5. i feel so lonely, like childhood again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgan is getting onto an elevator and it is sliding closed and spencer has never felt more vulnerable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "there's a part in the movie where you can see right through the acting, where you can tell I'm about to burst into tears." -richard siken

Morgan leaves the BAU.

And it’s understandable, of course it’s understandable, because he has a family and his job kills innocents, it doesn’t matter who they are, or what they have because he’s seen it happen hundreds of times. They all have.

  
So, he leaves.

Spencer Reid watches it happen and he feels as if a layer of armor has been stripped away. He is watching Derek Morgan get onto the elevator and he’s watching the elevator doors close.  
(another one lost, another one you drove away and-)

  
Shut up.  
He knows.

  
He digs his fingernails into his palms until they’re bleeding because this is what it takes to stop himself from running after Morgan, from begging him not to leave.  
Selfish, selfish, selfish, but is it so selfish to want a protector?

  
Morgan’s always been there. He's been there since Spencer started, he’s kept Spencer safe, he’s always, always kept Spencer safe. He was his brother. His friend. His partner.

_“Morgan! Meet our newest recruit: Dr. Spencer Reid.”_   
_“What? He’s just a kid.”_   
_“Actually, younger age has been proven to be an optimal time to start learning new things, such as learning a new language or learning a new skill. Plus, I’ve done extensive research in the psychology field and sociology and statistics and I already have one Ph. D and I feel as if I could be a great asset to-”_   
_“Whoa, whoa, kid. Slow down. Gideon, he always this talkative?”_   
_“What can I say? Kid’s a genius.”_   
_“Well, I can’t say I agree with the term genius as it-”_   
_“Okay, okay, kid. What’d you say your name was again?”_   
_“Spencer. Reid.”_   
_“Alright, kid, I’m Derek Morgan. Would you mind if I talked to Gideon for a second?”_

And now he was leaving.

  
Someone walking into the BAU gives him a concerned look as blood drops between his knuckles and Spencer only stuffs it into his pocket.

  
He keeps staring at the elevator.  
The doors have long closed with his best friend in them, and many have gotten on and off but he keeps staring anyways.  
He doesn’t know why.

  
(Yes he does. Of course he does. He's waiting for Morgan to come back.)

  
He’s waiting for his brother, his best friend, his partner to come back because he can’t abandon him, he can’t, he won’t because he’s always protected him, always, and Spencer is vulnerable, more than he’s ever been since Gideon pulled him from that classroom at Cal-tech and the elevator doors open and shut again with no one coming in or out.

  
No Morgan.  
(Not anymore)

  
Spencer holds in a whimper as he digs his fingernails into the bleeding wounds on his palm.

* * *

Spencer doesn't go home that night. He goes to a gun range, then a boxing gym, then the gun range again.

  
He flinches when Hotch calls him to come in.

  
(He only goes to work because the owner of the gun range is staring at him with concern and that makes his skin crawl.)

* * *

The day, the case, the flight and the endless concern make Spencer’s head pound.

  
It brings too much back.  
(Headaches, Miami, Maeve, _wait_!, grief, grief, too much grief, and his head pounds more)

  
He is not there for the case. He is not there for the day. He is not there for the flight to and from.

  
Physically, he is, pretending he’s fine and pretending like Morgan’s absence didn’t leave him completely fucking raw and he’s pretending to care about the case and maybe somewhere he’s talking to Rossi and Hotch but he can’t remember because all he can think about is how vulnerable he is.

  
He’s lost a protector.  
And he doubts they understand.

  
They pretend, sure, and they sympathize, sure, and they try to understand but what he’s feeling can't be explained because he is someone who depends so heavily on those around him that when they leave, it feels as if a part of him has been taken away. Ripped away.

  
He tries to explain it to them, and they almost get it, almost.  
(But they don’t. So he pretends he’s okay.)

  
And of course they all worry, but he ignores it and eventually they all stop because they have a job to do and so does he and he puts the feeling of insurmountable vulnerability aside and does his job.

* * *

Someone finally understands, later.  
He is looking at someone through steel bars and she reads him like no one else ever has and he knows it’s because she’s a psychopath and they are experts at reading people to manipulate them and he’s trying to not let his face show anything but it’s hard because:

  
She knows.

  
“You lost a protector, didn’t you?”  
He keeps a straight face as she tells him this but regardless she gives him a knowing look.

  
“And you can’t tell them, can you? they don’t understand.”  
His face is unwavering as she says this to him but she knows, of course she knows, because although he’s perfected his face to use on unsubs, Morgan leaving has stabbed a hole into it and the woman is crawling in.

  
She spits mashed potatoes in his hand and draws a random letter and he leaves as fast as he can before that woman can rip his carefully painted mask off.

* * *

Spencer goes home that night and holds his finger over the ‘call’ button on Morgan’s contact.

  
He almost presses it.  
(Selfish, selfish, selfish, he’s finally happy and you just want to beg him to come protect you? no wonder he left.)

  
Shut up, shut up, shut up-  
(Even if he didn’t choose to leave, you would’ve gotten him killed anyway.)

  
No, no, shut up-  
(you, selfish, weak piece of-)

  
He throws his phone against the wall.

* * *

He goes by Morgan’s house that night.  
He doesn’t go in. He doesn’t let Morgan know that he’s there. He just stares into the window.

  
Derek, his wife and their son are in the living room, surrounded by a pile of block legos, laughing as Hank waves them around and tries to build the biggest tower he can. Two glasses of wine rest in the hands of two happy adults, a box of apple juice in the hand of a happy child, and Spencer watches from outside.

  
(They’re happy.)  
He knows.  
He leaves without anyone noticing he was even there.

Spencer wonders if he will ever have what Morgan does. A family. True love.

  
Happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, as always!  
> disclaimer: I will not be writing morgan and reid as any more than friends. I know some people ship the two of them, but i personally don't. no hate to anyone who does! just not my thing.  
> feedback is always appreciated, and leave a kudos and/or comment if you enjoyed!  
> by the way: this is a three part series! i've planned it all out and am so excited to share it with y'all!  
> <33


	6. sometimes it is all too loud.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it is 2017 and spencer is dealing with the aftermath of being in prison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: suicidal thoughts

Spencer Reid is on a bridge. 

Wind whips his hair in a frenzy and his thin coat lets in freezing weather and chills ravage his skin but he doesn’t notice because his brain has more cruel things to attend to.

His eidetic memory is destroying him. 

(how did he end up here?)

* * *

Spencer is driven home by Hotch, or maybe Rossi. He doesn’t know and can’t bring himself to look because his brain is too busy reconstructing the smells and the taste of the expired chemicals the inmates used to clean laundry and every bone in his body is burning with guilt. He doesn’t want to see who is driving him home because he knows he doesn’t deserve the kindness of whoever is in the driver's seat. 

Spencer watches the steam rise off the poisonous mixture he made in the laundry room of the prison, his mind cruelly reconstructing the image and having it on repeat like a broken dvd player and suddenly his heart isn’t pumping blood anymore, it’s pumping pure guilt as he watches himself pour ammonia onto the white laundry detergent. 

_You’re just as guilty as them._

Shut up. 

He knows. 

“Spencer? You okay?” Rossi side-eyes him, his voice full of concern. 

“yeah.” Spencer says, shifting in his seat, away from his coworkers pitiful eyes. “Fine. Just tired.” 

There is nothing else said throughout the rest of the car ride, and Spencer leaves Rossi’s car without a word when he pulls in front of Reid’s apartment complex. 

* * *

Spencer can’t sleep.

(that’s a lie. He can. But when he sleeps, every smell and every sensation and every sound from that prison invades his body and he dreams he is still there, still mixing that deadly mix of ammonia and detergent, still doing things he condemned all those years ago to survive in hell. 

The guilt is the worst of it all.)

And when he awakes, he wonders why he bothered to do all those things to survive. Why he made a guilty man of himself to stay alive. 

He wonders if his team would’ve still tried to prove his ‘innocence’ if they knew what he did to survive. 

(Was it really just for survival if he enjoyed it? If he enjoyed hurting those people?)

What a sick form of justice, Spencer thinks. What a sick form of revenge set into place by all those people he caught. 

The condemner is twisted into one of the condemned. 

He tries not to think about it, and fails.

He gets up to make another cup of coffee.

Spencer can’t sleep. 

* * *

He runs out of coffee. 

And he tries to go without because he can’t bring himself to open his apartment door and leave but he falls asleep and:

_“i’m afraid i’m starting to think like them, starting to survive like them-“_

_“where is my mother?!”_

_“inmate!”_

_“how do you plead?”_

_“touching is prohibited!”_

And when he wakes up, Spencer immediately leaves for coffee. 

He can’t fall asleep.

* * *

Spencer Reid goes for coffee and passes a bridge and stops and stares into the water and suddenly his brain stops thinking about his guilt and starts overloading because this is one of the side effects of sleep deprivation, (he should know, he’s read exactly 12,345 words on the subject), and nothing is stopping and every word in the english, russian, japanese, spanish and korean dictionary are colliding in his mind and their definitions are bombarding him and he can’t think about anything, much less figure out why he stopped on this bridge. 

(He knows why. The explanation is lost within his plethora of knowledge that is flooding every inch of his brain.)

Everything is coming back.

And not just the words, not just the textbook knowledge, not just his studies.

Everything else is coming back.

Spencer Reid is on a bridge and is trying not to think of the-

_past- having existed or taken place in a period before the present_

but it is coming to haunt him, and he’s desperately trying not to think of a-

_goalpost- one of two vertical posts that constitutes the goal in various games._

or-

_Schizophrenia-_ _a mental illness that is characterized by disturbances in thought, perception, and behavior, by a loss of emotional responsiveness and extreme apathy, and by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life_

and-

_Abandonment-_ _the state of being abandoned_

_Addiction-_ _a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or abstinence_

_Bullies-_ _abuse and mistreatment of someone vulnerable by someone stronger, more powerful_

But he does anyway and all he’s thinking about is how much he wants it to stop.

* * *

Spencer is on a bridge and he feels 14 again with his mother’s schizophrenia pills in his hand and selfishness and guilt running rampant in his veins. 

He’s on a bridge and his mind is full of everything he doesn’t want to remember but does anyway because God is cruel and so is Spencer Reid because he has become the very thing he promised to catch. 

He wonders if this is what he was always meant to be. 

Tobias’s screams of being a sinner echo in his ear and he can almost feel the needle sliding into his skin as his brain plays the memory on repeat because this is what he was cursed with and this is what he will always be cursed with. 

Spencer steps onto the railing looking out at the small waves beneath the bridge. 

(he remembers his mother’s story of Spencer trying to balance on a fence at 4 years old. He smiles.)

(1985. The year he was abandoned by the one who was supposed to love him the most. The year he became the unwilling head of the family. The year his father moved 14 minutes away and left his son to grow up too fast. the year Spencer realized he could never just be a child again.)

And with this, every year of his life comes flooding back, with Spencer’s betrayal of his mother and his fault of other parents leaving forcing tears down his face and apologies from his cracked lips and he wavers on the railing and realizes that if he falls, the world would be better off without him because Charles and Raphael were right. 

He was a sinner, too much of a sinner to be left alive, and maybe this was giving himself too much credit but Spencer couldn’t do it anymore; he couldn’t watch himself destroy the people around him, he couldn’t watch himself drive away anyone who dared get close to him. 

The wind pushed him more insistently and he smiled. 

The water below him waved for him to come closer. 

“I’m coming.” Reid mumbled, and closed his eyes. 

_Finally_. 

* * *

“Reid?”

He should’ve known someone would find him. He doesn’t have it in him to be shocked. 

“Hey, Morgan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys so much for reading!! i have to admit, i struggled a bit on this chapter and still not totally confident on it, but that’s okay tbh. only one more fic in the series to go! i seriously appreciate every single one of you who comment and/or leave kudos here, it means a lot. happy holidays!! <33

**Author's Note:**

> ahh thanks so much for reading!! please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed <33 so sorry for the late update, i honestly meant to update earlier. if you’ve read my other fanfic, i appreciate you keeping up with it :)) if you’re new, welcome!! this can be read as a stand alone fic, but if you want to, you can go read my first fic in the series. feedback is also appreciated!! thank you for reading :))


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